Month: October 2012

Congratulations to the Science and Agricultural Journalism program at the University of Missouri as it celebrates its 90 th birthday this year. A news report we have added to the ACDC collection explains that Dean F. B. Mumford of the College of Agriculture and Dean Walter Williams of the School of Journalism announced this degree in February 1922.

Across the years, the respected Missouri program has prepared young journalists “to explain the complex and fascinating world of science, agriculture, the environment, food, natural resources, and medical and agricultural biotechnology and the impact on society.”

We were pleased to join with alumni, students, faculty and others in a 90 th Anniversary Event in Columbia and Boonville on September 7. You can read a brief report and view a slide show featuring people and activities associated with that program across the decades: http://cafnrnews.com/2012/08/guess-whos-90

Perils and safe-shooting tips from agricultural photographers

“With agriculture known to be among the most dangerous occupations in the world of work, where does that leave the journalists who cover it?” With that introduction, agricultural photographer Mark Moore recently launched a two-part series to highlight major risks that agricultural photographers face, and to share their tips for working safely.

It has been a special pleasure for those of us in ACDC to collaborate with Mark and seven other talented agricultural photographers in producing this series. Mark coordinated the team which included American Agricultural Editors’ Association members Gil Gullickson, Charles Johnson, Christine McClintic, John Otte, Harlen Persinger, Jim Patrico, and Wayne Wenzel.

Both features contribute to the professional development mission of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists and are now posted on the IFAJ website.

Traditional concepts of “rural” and “urban” have trouble standing alone in a world of multiple global flows of people, ideas, and fashion. So reported N. V. Pemunta and T. B. Obara, authors of a 2012 article in the Arts and Social Sciences Journal . They observed that individuals “have adopted hyphenated identities.” Their discussion explored dimensions such as these:

“Although people migrate, they remain carriers of their culture.”

“…even a rural environment is heterogeneous in terms of opinions and viewpoints.”

“…culture is not bounded and therefore does not occupy designated spaces.”

“The practice of urban agriculture cuts across socioeconomic groups…”

Authors suggested “we constantly need to document the specific impact of local, national, regional and global forces and flows on people’s lives because of multiple connections and not to freeze them in either rural or urban space…”

Thanks to Kevin Erb of University of Wisconsin-Extension for useful tips about managing the flow of email. He offered them in response to an invitation in a recent issue of ACDC News.

“As a state Extension professional, email is the bane of my existence. I can spend an entire day doing nothing but dealing with issues/questions/follow up via email, and walk out at the end of the day feeling nothing is accomplished. While I do not have control of my inbox yet, some steps I’ve implemented include:

Reducing newsletter/clipping service email to the four key ones that I feel are essential to my day to day job.

Switching to an email program that allows for fast searching of older messages.

Using the “flagging” or prioritizing feature to color code messages that need a response in the near term. This means looking quickly at the email that has arrived each morning and prioritizing the critical things. Creating subfolders for things that need to be kept on file.

Devoting a time period each week to ‘cleaning up the inbox.’

‘Disconnecting.’ I do not have a smartphone, and try to eliminate the impulse to keep a 24/7 tab on the inbox.”

How agricultural enterprises in the Czech Republic use social media.

During 2010, researchers at the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague carried out the first survey of social networks in the agrarian sector (companies, cooperatives, and farmers) of the Republic. A research paper we have added to the ACDC collection revealed findings such as these:

About 95 percent had internet connections at their disposal.

Respondents were active on social networks, with Facebook by far the most used.

Company presentation is only used to a relatively small extent. Social media were especially used for personal communications, gathering information, and for company communications.

The lively current topic of animal welfare is not new. We found such a message in an 1871 issue of The Lancaster Farmer , published 141 years ago. Animal welfare was the “bottom line” of an essay by S. P. Eby. Pointing to examples of misuse of cattle, horses, sheep, dogs, and poultry on farms at that time, Eby concluded:

“Practice humanity toward the animals. Teach your children to do so. Let them study Natural History, and learn the bright side of animal nature.”

Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu if you would like to read this essay. We processed it into ACDC recently as part of the John Harvey Collection.

Communicator activities approaching

November 2, 2012 Deadline for research posters and innovative-idea posters to be presented in the Agricultural Communications Section, Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists (SAAS) meeting, February 2-5, 2013, in Orlando, Florida USA. Information: Prof. Chris Morgan at acm@uga.edu or 706-542-7102.

November 7-9, 2012 “Our rich heritage: A bridge to the future.” Annual meeting of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) in Kansas City, Missouri USA. Information: http://www.nafb.com

November 26, 2012 Deadline for submitting papers for the 12 th International Conference on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries, Ocho Rios, Jamaica, May 19-22, 2-013. Organized by Working Group 9.4 of the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP). Information: http://www.ifipwg94.org/ifip-conference-2013

Not what I meant to say.

We close this issue of ACDC News with a conversation reported by John J. Davis in The Entomologists’ Joke Book (1937):

She: “Where do all the bugs go in winter?

He: “Search me.”

She: “No, thanks. I just wanted to know.”

Best wishes and good searching.

Please pass along your reactions, suggestions and ideas. Feel free to invite our help as you search for information. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @ACDCUIUC . And please suggest (or send) agricultural communications documents we might add to this unique collection. We welcome them in hard copy (sent to Ag Comm Documentation Center, 510 ACES Funk Library, 1101 S. Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801) or in electronic format sent to docctr@library.illinois.edu

As a recent Nuffield Scholar, Caroline Stocks of the Farmers Weekly (UK) editorial staff set out to investigate whether there is a “best” way to communicate with farmers during this period of immense change. She learned plenty, according to the July 2011 report she presented to the Nuffield Farming Scholarships Trust after her visits in the UK, Canada, India, Australia, and USA. Her analysis ranged broadly across print media, online farm news, social media, and mobile technology. She concluded:

“… I do not think there is a ‘one size fits all’ solution. Farming media need to get better at knowing their audiences so they can tailor their output accordingly. They need to stop thinking their staff can do everything, identify niches, and concentrate on doing certain aspects really well. Agricultural journalists I met repeatedly told me of feeling like they were being spread too thinly—it leaves them disheartened that they are not doing their job properly and left feeling that they are letting farmers down.”

She emphasized that agricultural media hold positions of trust in the farming community and “it is important they do not betray that position by letting the standards slip.”

Maybe the concept of “home cooking” can broaden our mental menu, according to anthropologist Richard Wilk of Indiana University. Apocalyptic predictions and simple dichotomies can easily dominate ideas about the future of food, he noted in Home Cooking in the Global Village . However, he sees no danger of losing culinary diversity. He identified several promising features of metaphorical “home cooking:”

Home cooking means a cuisine that is grounded in familiar, shared history; in common knowledge of places and people.

It is always concerned with quality, because the food is going to be eaten by people you care about.

In the context of home cooking, quality does not eliminate economic considerations; it is economical instead of wasteful.

The wellbeing of the family is the bottom line, and the goal is never just physical nutrition of the body, but instead the nourishment of the person.

A home is a particular place, but it is always a place where people raised in different families come together to form new traditions. These are handed across generations, not as hidebound rules but as assorted recipes and a set of values to guide a new family that will face a changing world.

Home cooking is humane, founded in the best aspects of social life, cooperation, generosity and compassion, willingness to work together even when it means sacrifice and compromise.

“I can hardly keep up with them,” an agricultural editor reported during a recent conversation. Email messages flood into her inbox at the rate of about 600 messages a day.

Is this typical of the email traffic with which you are dealing?

If so, how do you manage it?

Please let us know of your experiences with email and other digital messaging. Also, what tools, techniques, and tips might you pass along to other agricultural journalists and communicators? Along with you, we in ACDC will help identify ways to manage the traffic. Get in touch with us at: docctr@library.illinois.edu

Effective communicators in agriculture are better able to manage stress. More satisfied in their jobs, too.

Findings of new research involving 652 employees in the Agriculture Bank and Education Administrations of Iran suggest paying much attention to stress management and communications effectiveness, which can lead to greater job satisfaction. Communications effectiveness appeared as a strong mediator variable in his study we have added to the ACDC collection from the International Journal of Managing Information Technology . Authors noted that prior research has ignored the link between stress management, communications effectiveness, and job satisfaction.

TV viewing, outdoor play and obesity of rural and urban school children.

A survey involving 10,000 students in India revealed that rural children watched significantly less television than urban children. These findings, reported in the Online Journal of Health and Allied Sciences , also showed evidence of the impact of TV viewing on obesity in children in a district of Punjab. As well, inactive leisure pursuits such as video/computer games showed direct correlation with obesity. Authors recommended that outdoor playing should be encouraged and supported at home and at school.

It tops the list of desires, according to a new article in Psychological Science . The article, “What people desire, feel conflicted about and try to resist in everyday life,” reflected nearly 7,800 reports of desires logged by 205 adults in Germany during one week. Eating food was reported most frequently among the desires, although it was not reported as the strongest desire (sleep held that spot), nor did eating create in their minds the greatest conflict between desire and other goals (leisure topped that scale). Above-average rates if resistance were found for sleep, sex, leisure, spending, and eating.

Authors concluded that the average adult in this study spent about eight hours a day feeling desires, three hours resisting them and half an hour yielding to previously-resisted ones.

October 15, 2012 Deadline for research and professional papers to be presented in the Agricultural Communications Section, Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists (SAAS) meeting, February 2-5, 2013, at Orlando, Florida USA. Information: Frankie Gould at: FGould@agcenter.lsu.edu or 225-578-5679.

October 23-24, 2012 Food Integrity Summit in Chicago, Illinois USA. A forum on ethics, values and trust, giving food system stakeholders opportunity to address the fundamental challenge of building trust in today’s food. Strategic partners: International Food Information Council and National Restaurant Association. Information: http://www.foodintegrity.org/events/2012-summit

November 2, 2012 Deadline for research posters and innovative-idea posters to be presented in the Agricultural Communications Section, Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists (SAAS) meeting, February 2-5, 2013, in Orlando, Florida USA. Information: Prof. Chris Morgan at: acm@uga.edu or 706-542-7102.

November 7-9, 2012 “Our rich heritage: A bridge to the future.” Annual meeting of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) in Kansas City, Missouri USA. Information: http://www.nafb.com

November 26, 2012 Deadline for submitting papers for the 12 th International Conference on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries, Ocho Rios, Jamaica, May 19-22, 2-013. Organized by Working Group 9.4 of the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP). Information: http://www.ifipwg94.org/ifip-conference-2013

Signing off with beautiful rural music.

We close this issue of ACDC News with a late-summer conversation from the 1930s.

A farmer and his wife lived near the village church. One warm Sunday evening, while they sat dozing on the porch, the crickets set up a loud chirping.

“I just love to hear the chirping noise,” said the husband drowsily, and before the crickets had stopped he was fast asleep.

Soon after, the church choir broke out into a beautiful chant.

“Just listen to that,” exclaimed his wife. “Isn’t that beautiful?”

“Yes,” he murmured sleepily. “They do it with their hind legs.”

Best wishes and good searching.

Please pass along your reactions, suggestions and ideas. Feel free to invite our help as you search for information. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @ACDCUIUC . And please suggest (or send) agricultural communications documents we might add to this unique collection. We welcome them in hard copy (sent to Ag Comm Documentation Center, 510 LIAC, 1101 S. Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801) or in electronic format sent to docctr@library.illinois.edu